Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/significanceoffrOOturn V.0 ■C '1. ‘ I It If ■■nJ i# 1 / ■ r I i t ;!■ f ■I. 1 ■I f: 5 53d Congress, j(J Seftsinn. SENATE. Mis. Doc. No. 104. annual kepoet OF THE A)[E1!1CAX lllSTOliirAL ASSOCIATION F(4U * THE YE^VR 1808. f WASHINGTON : GOVERNJrENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1894. ) 9 I THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY.* By Fredehick J. Turner. lu a rece nt balletiii of the, Siinerintendent of the Census for 1800 appeartlie.se siarniticant word.s : •• Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the iiusettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier" line. In the discussion of its extent, its we.stward movement, etcTrit can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the cen- sus reports.’’ This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of tbe coloniza- tion of the Great West, The existence of an area of free lan d. its con tinuo us recess ion, and the ad vance of American settle- ment westward, exnlam American devetopmen t. Behind iu.stitutions, behind constitutional forms and modi- fications, lie the vital forces that cull these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. '^he_pecuLU arity of^lniericmijustitutions is, the fact th at they have b een com pelled to adant themse lyes. to the changes of an expan d- ing people — to the cha a^iges juvol yed in crossing a jcojituient, iT TlvTnni ug a~ wildern^s, and in developing at each area of th mjQrogress-Piit_Q f the pri mitive, ec. onomic and politl^I'cd n- di tions of the frontier inUL.tke,compUexity_ of c ity life. Said Calhoun in 1817, We are great, and rapidlj' — I was about to say fearfully — growing!”! So saying, he touched the distin- guishing feature of American life. All peoides show develop- ment; the germ theory of politi(U has been sufficiently empha- sized. In the case of most nations, however, the development * Since the meeting of the America n Historical Association, this paper has also been given as an address to the State Historical Society of Wis- consin, December 1-1, 1893. I have to thank the Secretary of the Society, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, for securin g valuable material for my use in the preparation of the paper. tAbridgment of Debates of Congre.Sh, v., p. 706. 199 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 2ro lias occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has expanded, it has met other growinj^ peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenom- enon. Limiting- our attention to the Atlantic coast, we have the familiar xdienomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative govtumment; the didereutiatiou of simple colonial governments into com- plex organs; the pi'ogress from primitive industrial society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have, in addition to this a recurre.iice of the proces s ot evolution in each western area reached in the processoT expa^ion. Thus American d evelonment has exhibited no t merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive <-onuitions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new d evelopment to r that are~ American social develo])me nt has, been continually beginn ing ov er again on the frontier, f This\ perennial rebirth/tiiis fHiidity of^Auierican life, this exiiansioii westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primiti ve society, fprnish the forces dominat- ' ing Ame rican char acter.y /The truegjoint of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the great West. Even the slavery struggle, which is made so exclusive an object of attention by writers like Prof, von Holst, occupies its important ])lace in American history because of its relation to westward expansion. In this advance, the frouti'gr is the outer.edge of the wave — the m eeting- point between snvnoe.ry mid civilizat ion . Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of bor- der warfare and the chase, btit as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected. ^ The American frontier is jsh arply distinguished from the European Irontier — a tortihedr boundary line running through Mense populations. The most significant thing about th e r American frontier is, t hat it li bs at the hit her edge of free.la nd. in tne census reports it is tretded as the margin of that settle- ment which has a density of two or more to the square mile. The term is an elastic one, an(7 for our purposes does not need sharp definition. We shall consider the whole frontier belt, including the Indian country and the outer margin of the “ settled area” of the census r eports. This paper will make no attempt to treat the subject (Exhaustively; its aim is simply to call attention to the frontier', as a fertile held for investiga- FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 201 tiou, and to sugge.st some of the ]irobleins which arise in con- nection with it. In the settlement of America we have to observe how Eiiro- ]tean life entered the continent, and hou- America inoditied and developed that life and reacted on Europe. Our early liistory is the study of Eur oiiean germs developing in a n Ameri can environment. Too exclusive attention has been paid by institutional students to the Germanic origins, too little to the American factors. The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness niasters tlie colonist. It finds him a European in dress, indus- tries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and i)uts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalj) in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the fron- tier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must acce]>t the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian tr.ails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness, but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the devel- opment of Germanic germs, any more than the first phenom- enon was a case of reversion to the Germanic mar k. The fact is, that boro is a iipw pr.^lupt tRof Is /American, j At first, the i rontiei^as the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward , the frontier became ; As succe.ssive terminal moraines result from s uccessive glaciations, .so each frontier leaves its t races behind it, and wheni t b ecomes a set tlorl arp^ tRp r^giAn still partakes of the front ier chara cteristics. Thus the advance o f the frontier has meant a steady movement away from th e influence of Europe, a steady growth of indep endence ou_ Ainerican tines. And to study this advance, the men who gfStV Up iTuder” these conditions, and the i)oliticaI, economic, and social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history. 202 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. STAGES OF FRONTIER ADVANCE. In the course of the seventeenth century the frontier was advanced np the Atlantic river courses, jnst beyond the “tali'/ line, ”anace and in a different Avay than the frontier reached by the birch canoe or the pack horse. The geologist traces * See the suggestive paper by Prof. Jesse Macy, The lustitutioual Begin- nings of a Western State. t Shinn, Mining Camps. i Compare Thorpe, in Annals American Academy of Political and Social Science, September, 1891 ; Bryce, American Common wealth(1888), ii, p. 689. FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 207 patiently the shores of ancient seas, maps their areas, and com- pares the older and the newer. It would be a work worth the historian’s labors to mark these various frontiers and in detail coni])are one with another. Isot only would there result a more adequate conception of American develoi>ment and character- istics, but invaluable additions would be made to the history of society. Loria,* the Italian economist, has uiged the .study of colo- nial life as an aid in understandiu"; the stages of European development, affirming that colonial settlement is for economic science what the mountain is for geology, bringing to light primitivec^tratilications. “America,'’ he says, “has the key to the historical enigma which Kuro])e has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the course of universal history.” There is much truth in this. The Enited States lies like a huge ])age in the history of society. Line by line as we read tliis continental page fromwe.st ti>east Ave tind the record of social evolution. It begins with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, t he nat hllnder of civilizatiprLg we read the annals of the ])astoi al stage in ranch life; the exploitation of the soil by the raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming communi- ties; the intensive culture of the denser farm settlement ; and finally the manufacturing organization Avith city and factory system, t This page is familiar to the student of census sta- tistics, but how little of it has been used by our historians. Particularly in eastern States this i»age is a palinq)sest. What is uoA\’ a manufacturing State Avas i!i an earlier decade an area of intensive farming. Earlier yet it had been a wheat area, and still earlier the “ range” had attracted the cattle- herder. Thus Wisconsin, now developing manufacture, is a State with A'aried agricultural interests. But earlier it was gh'en OA’er to almost exclusive grain-raising, like ISTorth Dakota at the present time. Each of these areas has had an intiuence in our economic *Loria, Aiialisi della Proprieta Capitalista, ii., p. 15. t Compare Observations on the North American Land Company, Loudon, 1796, pp. XV, 144; Logan, History of Upper South Carolina, i, pp. 149-151; Turner, Character and Influence of Indian Trade in AViscousin, p. 18 ; Peck, New Guide for Emigrants (Boston, 1837), ch. iv; Compendium Eleventh Census, i, p. xl. AMEKICAX HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 2().S and political history; the evolution of each into a higher stage lias worked political transformations. But what consti- tutional historian has made any adeipiate attemjitto interpret political facts by tin' light of these social areas and changes?* d'lie Atlantic frontier was compounded of lisherman, fur- trader, miner, cattle raiser, and farmer Excepting the hsher- man, each type of industry was on the march toward the West, impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each jiassed in succes- sive waves across the continent. Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single lile — the bufl'alo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer — and the frontier has ]iassed by. Stand at South Pass in the Bockies a century later and see the same jirocession with wider intervals between. The unequal rate of advance com- pels us to distingui.sh the frontier into the trader’s frontier, the rancher’s frontier, or the miner’s frontier, and the farmer’s frontier. When the mines and the cow pens were still neai' the fall line the tiaders’ pack trains were tinkling across the Alleghanies, and the French on the Great Lakes were fortify- ing their posts, alarmed by the British trader’s birch canoe. AVhen the trappers scaled the Bockies, the farmer was still near the month of the Missouri. THE INDIAN TRADER'S FRONTIER. Why was it that the Indian trader passed so rapidly across the continent? What etfects followed from the ti'ader’s frontier? The trade was coeval with American discovery. The Norsemen, Vespuccius, Verrazani, Hudson, John Smith, all trafficked for fnrs. The Plymouth pilgrims settled in Indian cornfields, and their first return cargo was of beaver and lum- ber. The records of the various New England colonies show how steadily exploration was carried into the wilderness by this trade. What is true for New England is, as would be expected, even plainer for the rest of the colonies. All along the coast from Maine to Georgia the Indian trade opened up the river courses. Steadily the trader passed westward, utilizing the older lines of French trade. The Ohio, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Platte, the lines of western advance, were ascended by traders. They found * See pages 220, 221, 223, pos/, for illustrations of the political accompani- ments of changed industrial conditions. FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 209 the passes iu the Eoeky Mountains and guided Lewis and Clarke,* Fremont, and Bidwell. The explanation of (he rapidity of this advance is connected with the effects of the trader on the Indian. The trading' post left the unarmed tribes at the mercy of those that had purchased tire-arms — a truth which the Iroipiois Indians wrote in blood, and so the remote and unvisitcd tribes gaA’e eager welcome to the trader. ‘‘The savages,’’ wrote La Salle, “take better care of us French than of their own children; from us only can they get guns and goods.” This accounts for the trader’s power and the rapidity of his advance. Thus the disintegrating forces of civilization entered the wilderness. Every river valley and Indian trail became a fissure in Indian society, and so that society became honeycombed. Long before the pioneer farmer appeared on the scene, primitive Indian life had passed away. The farmers met Indians armed with guns. The trading frontier, while steadily undermiinng Indian power by making the tribes ultimately dependent on the whites, yet, through its sale of guns, gave to the Indians increased power of resistance | to the farming frontier. French colonization was dominated , by its trading frontier; English colonization b}" its farming frontier. There was an antagonism between the two frontiers as between the t'n o nations. Said Duquesne to the Iroquois, “Are you ignorant of the difference between the king of Eng- land and the king of France? Go see the forts that our king has established and you will see that you can still hunt luider their very walls. They have been placed for your advantage in places which you frequent. The English, on the contraiy, are no sooner in possession of a place than the game is driven away. The forest falls before them as they advance, and the soil is laid bare so that you can scarce find the wherewithal to erect a shelter for the night.” And yet, iu spite of this opposition of the interests of the trader and the farmer, the Indian trade pioneered the way for civilization. The buff’alo trail became the Indian trail, and this because the trader’s “trace;” the trails widened into roads, and the roads into turnpikes, and these iu turn were transformed into railroads. The same origin can be shown for the railroads of the South, the far West, and the Dominion *But Lewis and Clarke were tke first to explore the route from the Missouri to the Columbia. S. Mis. 104 14 210 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, of ( 'iuiada.* The trading- posts readied by these trails -were oil the sites of Indian villages tvliidi had been placed in positions suggested by nature; and these trading jiosts, situated so as to connnand the lAUiter systems of the country, have groAvn into such cities as Albany, rittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kansas City. Thus civilizatiou in America has followed the arteries made bj" geology, pouring an ever richer tide through them, until at last the slender paths of aboriginal intercourse have been broadened and interwoven into the complex mazes of modern commercial lines; the wilderness has been interpenetrated by lines of civilization giowing evermore numerous. It is like the steady growth of a complex nervous system for the originally simple, inert continent. If one would understand why Ave are to-day one nation, rather than a collection of isolated states, he must study this economic and social con- solidation of the country. In this progress from saAvage con- ditions lie topics for the evolutionist.! The effect of the Indian frontier as a consolidating agent in our history is important. From the close of the seventeenth century Avarious intercolonial congresses haA'e been called to treat with Indians and establish common measures of defense. Particularism was strongest in colonies Avith no Indian frontier. This frontier stretched along the AA'estern border like a cord of union. The Indian was a common danger, demanding united action. Most celebrated of these conferences was the Albany congress of 1754, called to treat with the Six Kations, and to consider iilans of union. EA'en a cursory reading of the plan lAroposed by the congress reAmals the imiiortance of the frontier. The i)owers of the general council and the officers were, chiefly, the determination of peace and war with the Indians, the regu- lation of Indian trade, the purchase of Indian lands, and the creation and government of new settlements as a security against the Indians. It is evident that the unifying tenden- cies of the ReAmlutionary period were facilitated by the previous cooperation in the regulation of the frontier. In this connec- tion may be mentioned the importance of the frontier, from * Narrative aud Critical History of America, auii, p. 10; Sparks’ AA’ask- ingtou AA’orks, IX, pp. 303, 327 ; Logan, History of Upper South Carolina, i; McDonald, Life of Kenton, p. 72; Cong. Record, xxiii, p. 57. + On the effect of the fur trade in opening the routes of migration, see the author’s Character and luflueiice of the Indian Trade in AVisconsin. / FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORl’ — TURNER. 211 that (lay to this, as a military traiiiiug school, keepiug' alive the ijower of resistance to aggression, and developing the stal- wart and rugged qualities of the frontiersman. THE rancher’s FRONTIER. It would not be possible in the limits of this paper to trace the other frontiers across the continent. Travelers of the eighteenth century found the “cowpens” among the cane- bi'akes and pea vine pastures of the South, and the “cow drivers” took their droves to Charleston, Philadelphia, andlNew York.* Travelers at the close of the War of 1S12 met droves of more than a thousand cattle and swine from the interior of Ohio going to Pennsjdvania to fatten for the Philadelphia mar- ket.! The ranges of the Great Plains, with ranch and cowboy and nomadic life, are things of yesterday and of to-day. The experience of the Carolina cowpens guided the ranchers of Texas. One element favoring the rai)id extension of the rancher’s frontier is the fact that in a remote country lacking transportation facilities the product must be in small bulk, or must be able to transport itself, and the cattle raiser could easily drive his product to market. The effect of these great ranches on the subsequent agrarian history of tbe localities in which they existed should be studied. THE farmer’s frontier. The maps of the census reports show an uneven advance of the farmer’s frontier, with tongues of settlement pushed for- ward and with indentations of wilderness. In part this is due to Indian resistance, in part to the location of river valleys and passes, in part to the unequal force of the centers of fron- tier attraction. Among the important centers of attraction may be mentioned the following: fertile and favorably situated soils, salt springs, mines, and armj^ posts. arm:y posts. The frontier army iiost, serving to protect the settlers from the Indians, has also acted as a wedge to open the Indian country, and has been a nucleus for settlement, f In this con- ’ Lodge, English Colonies, p. 152 and citations; Logan, Hist, of Upjier South Carolina, i, p. 151. t Flint, Recollections, p. 9. tSee Monette, Mississippi Valley, i, p. 34*1. 212 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. nection mention .should also be made of the Government mili- tary and exploring expeditions in determining the lines of set- tlement. But all the more important expeditions were greatly indebted to the earliest pathmakers, the Indian guides, the traders and trai)pers, and the French voyageurs, who were inevitable parts of governmental ex])editions from the days of Lewis and Clarke.* * * § Each expedition was an epitome of the previous factors in western advance. SALT SPRINGS. In an interesting monograph, Victor Helm f has traced the effect of salt upon early European development, and has pointed out how it affected the lines of settlement and the form of administration. A similar study might be made for the salt springs of the United States. The early .settlers were tied to the coast by the need of salt, without which they could not preserve their meats or live in comfort. Writing in 1752, Bi.shop Spangenburg says of a colony for which he was seek- ing lands ill Uorth Carolina, “They will require salt & other necessaries which they can neither manutacture nor raise. Either they must go to Charleston, which is 300 miles distant * * * Or else they mu.st go to Boling's Point in on a branch of the dames & is also 300 miles from here * * * Or else they must go down the Roanoke — I know not how many miles — where salt is brought up from the Cape Fear.” t This may serve as a typical illustration. An annual pilgrimage to the coast for salt thus became essential. Taking Hocks or furs and ginseng root, the early settlers sent their pack trains after seeding time each 3 ’ear to the coast.§ This ])roved to be an important educational influence, since it was almost the only way in which the pioneer learned what was going on in the East. But when discovery was made of the salt springs of the Kana wha, and the Holston, and Kentuck^y, and central Kew York, the West began to be freed from dependence on the coast. It was in part the effect of finding these salt si)rings that enabled settlement to cross the mountains. *Coues', Lewis olitics. yet in politics in general tliey were a very solid factor. LAND. The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmer. Good soils have been the most continuous attraction to the farmer’s frontier. The land hun- ger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, in early colonial days; the search for soils took the Massa- chusetts men to Pennsylvania and to Kew A'ork. As the eastern lands were taken up migration flowed across them to the west. Daniel Boone, the great backwoodsman, who com- bined the occupations of hunter, trader, cattle-raiser, farmer, and surveyor — learning, probably from the traders, of the fertility of the lands on the upper Yadkin, where the traders were wont to rest as they took their way to the Indians, left his Pennsylvania home with his father, and passed down the Great Valley road to that stream. Learning from a trader whose posts were on the Eeri Eiver in Kentucky of its game and rich pastures, he pioneered the way for the frrmers to that region. Thence he passed to the frontier of Missouri, where his settlement was long a landmark on the frontier. Here again he helped to open the way for civilization, finding salt licks, and trails, and laud. His sou was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Eocky Mountains, and his party are said to have been the first to camp on the present site of Denver. His gr andson, _Col. A. J. Boone, of Colorado, was a power among the Indians of the Eocky Mountains, and was appointed an agent by the Government. Kit Carson’s mother 214 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. was a Boone.* Thus this family epitomizes the baekwoods- man’s advance across the contiiieiit. The farmer’s advance came in a distinct series of waves. In Peck’s Kew Guide to the West, ])uh]ished in Boston in 1837, occurs this suggestive ]»assage : Generally, in all the western settlements, three classes, like the. waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First comes the jiioncer, who dei>ends for the subsistence of his family chietly upon the natural growth of vegetation, called the “range,” and the iiroceeds of hunting. Ilis implements of agriculture are rude, chielly of his own make, and his efforts directed mainly to a cro2> of corn and a “ truck jtatch.” The last is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears, encum- bers, and potatoes. A log cabin, and, occasionally, a stable and corn-crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or “ deadened,” and fenced, are enough for his occn]iancy. It is (pute immaterial whether he ever be- comes the owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the “lord of the manor.” With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods with his family, and becomes the founder of anew county, or iierhaps state. He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other families of similar tastes and habits, and occuiiies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little prec.arions, or, which is more frequently the case, till the neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges, and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow room. The preemption law enables him to disjiose of his cabin and cornfield to the next class of emigrants; and, to employ his own figures, he “breaks for the high timber,” “clears out for the New Purchase,” or migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same jirocess over. The next class of emigrants purchase the lauds, add field to field, clear out tlie roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put up hewn log houses with glass windows and brick or stone cbimneys, occasionally plant orchards, build mills, schoolhouses, court-houses, etc., and exhibit the picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life. Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enteri)rise come. The settler is ready to sell out and take the advantage of the rise in property, push farther into the interior and become, himself, a man of capital and enterprise in turn. The small village rises to a spacious town or city; substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens, colleges, and churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks, leghorns, craiies, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities, and fashions are in vogue. Thus wave after wave is rolling westward; the real Eldorado is still farther on. A portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst the general movement, improve their habits and condition, and ri,?e in the scale of society. The writer has traveled much amongst the first class, the real pioneers. He has lived many years in connection with the second grade; and now *Hale, Daniel Boone (pamphlet). FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 215 tlie tliini wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Migration lias decouie almost a lial>it in the AYest. Hundreds of men can be found, not over 50 years of age, who have settled for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time on a new s)iot. To sell out and remove only a fe hundred miles makes up a portion of the variety of backwoods life and manners. Oiiiittiiig- those of the ]»ioiieer fariners tvho move from the love of adventure, the advance of the more steady farmer is easy to understand. Obviou.slj' the immigrant was attracted by the cheai) lands of the frontier, and even the native farmer felt their intluence strongly. Year by year the farmers who lived on soil whose returns were diminished by unrotated crojis were offered the virgin soil of the frontier at nominal prices. Their growing families demanded more lands, and these were dear. "The competition of the unexhausted, cheap, and easily tilled ]frairie lands compelled the farmer either to go west and continue the exhaustion of the soil on a new frontier, or to adopt intensive culture. Thus the census of 1800 shows, in the Northwest, many counties in which there is an absolute or a relative decrease of population. These States have been sending farmers to advance the frontier on the plains, and have tliemselves begun to turn to intensive farming and to manufacture. A decade before this, Ohio had shown the same transition stage.- Thus the demand for land and the love of Avilderness freedom drew the frontier eA’er onward. TIaAung now roughly outlined the Amrious kinds of frontiers, and their modes of adAuince, chiefly from the jioint of A’ieAV of the frontier itself, we may next inquire what were the influences on the East and on the Old World. A rapid enumeration of some of the more noteworthy effects is all that I liave time for. COMPOSITE NATIONALITY. First, we note that the frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American jieople. The coast was preponderantly English, but the later tides of continental im- migration flowed across to the free lauds. This was the case from the early colonial days. The Scotch Irish and the Pala- ’ Compare Baily, Tour iu the Unsettled Parts of Nortli America (London, 1856), pp. 217-219, where a similar analysis is made for 1796. See also Collot, Journey in North America (Paris, 1826), p 109; Observations on the North American Land Company (London, 1796), pp. xa', 141; Logan, History of Upper South Carolina. 2Ki AMEKICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. tine Germans, oi- “Pemisylvaiiia Dutcli.” furui-slied tbe dom- inant clement in the stock of the cf)]ouial frontier. With these ])eoples were also the freed indented servants, or redemi>tioners, who at the expiration of tlieir time of service ])assed to the frontier. Governor Spottswood of Virginia writes in 1717, “The inhabitants of our frontiers are composed geneiallyof i-neh as liave been transportes, and staple crops began to give way to diversified agriculture for a time. The effect of this phase of the frontier action ui>on the northern section is perceived when we realize how. the advance of the frontier aroused seaboard cities like Boston, Isew York, and Baltimore, to engage in rivalry for what AVashington called the exten- sive and valuable trade of a rising empire.” EFFECTS ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION. The legislation which most developed the powers of the National Government, and ]ilaycd the largest ]iart in its activ- ity, was conditioned on the frontier. AVriters have discussed the subjects of tariff, laud, and internal improvement, as sub- sidiary to the slavery question. But when American histoiy comes to be rightly viewed it will be seen that the slavery question is an incident. In the period from the end of the first half of the present century to the close of the civil war slav- eiy rose toprimary, but far from exclusive, imi)ortance. But this does not justify Dr. von Holst (to take an example) in treating our constitutional history in its formative period down to 1S2S in a single volume, giving six volumes chiefly to the history of slavery from 1828 to 1801, under the title “Constitu- tional History of the United States.” The growth of national- ism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier. Even so recent a writer as Bhodes, in his History of the United States since the compromise of 1850, has treated the legislation called out by the western advance as incidental to the slavery struggle. This is a wrong perspective. The pioneer needed the goods of the coast, and so the grand series of internal improvement and railroad legislation began, Avith poteut nationalizing effects. Over internal improvements occurred great debates, in which ; gruA’e constitutional questions were discussed. Sectional ; groupings appear in the votes, profoundly significant for the ^ tVestoii, Documeuts coiinecteil with History of South Carolina, p. 61. 218 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. liisturiaii. Loose coustructioii inereased as the nation marelied westward.* Lut tlie West was not content with bringing the form to the factory. Under the lead of Clay — Harry of the West’’ — i)rotective tariffs were pas.sed, with the cry of bring- ing the factory to the farm. The disposition of the public lands was a third important subject of national legislation influenced by the frontier. THE PUBLIC BOMAIN. The ]mblic domain has been a force of profound importanc e in the nationalizati on and development of the Governniei 1 1. The effects of the struggle of thelanded and the landless States, and of the ordinance of 17S7, need no discussion, t Adminis- tratively the frontier called out some of the highe.st and most vitalizing activities of the General Government. The ]nirchase of Louisiana was perhaps the constitutional turning point in the history of the Eepublic, inasmuch as it afforded both a new area for national legislation and the occasion of the downfall of the policy of strict construction. But the pui’chase of Louis- iana was called out by frontier needs and demands. As fron- tier States accrued to the Union the national power grew. In a speech on the dedication of the Calhoun monument Jdr. Lamar explained : ‘Hn 17S9 the States were the creators of the Federal Government; in ISGl the Federal Government Avas the creator of a large majority of the States.” When Ave consider the public domain from the point of view of the sale and disposal of the luiblic lands Ave are again brought face to face with the frontier. The policy of the United States in dealing with its lands is in sharji contrast with the European system of scientific administration. Efforts to makethis domain a source of reA^enue, and to withhold it from emigrants in order that settlement might be compact, were in vain. The jealousy and the fears of the East were powerless in the face of the demands of the fiontiersmen. John Quincy Adams was obliged to confess: ‘Oly own system of administration, which was to make the national doiuain the inexhaustible fund for progress- ive and unceasing internal improvement, has failed.” The *See, for example, the speech of Clay, in the House of RepresentatiA’es, .January 30, 1824. tSee the admirable monograph hy Prof. H. B. Adams, Maryland’s Influ- ence on the Land Cessions; and also President Welling, in Papers Ameri- can Historical Association, iii, p. 411. FROXTIEIi IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 219 reason is obvious; a system of administration was not what the West demanded; it wanted land. Adams states tlie situa- tion as follows: “The slaveholders of the South have bous'ht the cooperation of the Avestern country by the bi’ibe of the western lands, abandoning to the new Western States their own proportion of the public property and aiding them in the design of grasping all thelands into their own hands. Thomas H. Benton was the author of this system, Avhich he brought forward as a substitute for the American system of ]\Ir. Clay, and to supplant him as the leading statesman of the West. Mr. Clay, by his tariff compromise with IMr. Calhoun, aban- doned his own American system. At the same time he brought forward a plan for distributing among all the States of the Union the proceeds of the sales of the public lands. His bill for that purpose passed both Houses of Congress, but was A'etoed by President Jackson, who, in his annual message of December, 1832, formally recommended that all public lands should be gratuitously^ giA'en aAvay to individual adA^euturers and to the States in Avhich the lands are situated.* “2s 0 .subject,” said Henry Clay, “which has presented itself to the present, or perhaps any preceding. Congress, is of greater magnitude than that of the public lands.” AVhen Ave consider the far-reaching effects of the Government’s land policy upon l>olitical, economic, and social aspects of American life, we are disposed to agree with him. But this legislation was framed under frontier influences, and under the lead of Western states- men like Benton and Jackson. Said Senator Scott of Indiana in 1841: “I consider the preemption hiAV merely declaratory of the custom or common law of the settlers.” NATIONAL TENDENCIES OF THE FRONTIER. It is safe to say that the legislation with regard to land,} tariff, and internal improvements — the American system of theli nationalizing Whig party — Avas conditioned on frontier ideas 1^' and needs. But it was not merely in legislative action that the frontier worked against the sectionalism of the coast. The economic and social characteristics of the frontier Avorked against sectionalism. The men of the frontier had closer resemblances to the Middle region than to either of the other sections. Pennsylvania had been the seed-plot of frontier emigration, and, although she passed on her settlers along the 'Adams Memoirs, ix, pp. 247, 248. AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 2-JO Great Valley into tiie west of Virginia and the Carolinas, yet the industrial society of these Southern frontiersmen was always more like that of the IMiddle region than like that of the tide- water portion of the South, which later came to si)read its industrial type thioughout the South. The ^Middle region, entered hy Vew York harbor, was an o}»en door to all Eurojie. The tide-water i>art of the. South re]>resented typical Englishmen, moditied by a warm climate and servile labor, and living' in baronial fashion on great plan- tations; ZSTew England stood for a special English m(»vement — Puritanism. The Middle region was less English than the other sections. It had a Avide mixture of nationalities, a varied society, the mixed town and county system of local govern- ment. a varied economic life, many religious sects. In short, it was a region mediating between Xew England and the South, and the East and the West. It represented that composite nationality which the contemi)orary United States exhibits, that juxtaposition of non-English groups, occuitying a A’alley or a little settlement, and pi-eseuting redections of the map of Europe in their variety. It was democratic and nonsectional, if not national; ‘‘easy, tolerant, and contented ;" rooted strongly in material, prospei’ity. It was tyjiical of the. modern United States. It Avas least sectional, not only because it lay betAveen Vorth and South, but also because with no barriers to shut out its frontiers from its settled region, and Avith a system of connecting waterAvays, the Middle region mediated between East and "West as well as between Vorth and South. Thus it became the typically American region. Even the XeAV Eng- lander, Avho was shut out from the frontier bj' the Middle region, tarrying in ZSTew York or Pennsylvania on his Avest- ward march, lost the acutene.ss of his sectionalism on the way.* Tlie spread of cotton culture into the interior of the South finally broke down the contrast between the “tide-water” region and the rest of the State, and ba.sed Southern interests on slaA'ery. Before this process revealed its results the west- ern portion of the South, which Avas akin to Pennsylvania in stock, society, and industry, showetl tendencies to fall away from the faith of the fathers into internal improA^ement legisla- tion and nationalism. In the Virginia convention of lS29-’30, called to revdse the constitution, Mr. Leigh, of Chesterfield, one of the tide-water counties, declared: *Autbor's article iu The Agis (iladisoii, AVis.), November 4, 1892. FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 221 One of the main causes of discontent which led to this convention, that which had the strongest intlncuce in overcoming our veneration for the work of our fathers, which taught us to contemn the sentiments of Henry and Mason and Pendleton, which weaned us from our reverence for tlie constituted authorities of the State, was an overweening passion for internal improvement. I say this with perfect knowledge, for it has heen avowed to me hy gentlemeu from the West over and over again. And let me tell the gentleman from Alhemarle (Mr. Gordon) that it has heen another principal object of those who set this ball of revolution in motion, to overturn the doctrine of State rights, of which Virginia has been the very pillar, and to remove the barrier slie has interj)osed to the interfer- ence of the Federal Government in that same work of internal improve- ment, by so reorganizing the legislature that Virginia, too, may bo hitched to the Federal car. It was tliis iiatioiializilig tendency of the West that trans- formed the democracy of Jcfl'erson into tlie natioind rcpublic- auism of Monroe and the deinocrticy of Andrew Jackson. The We.st of the war of 1S12, the West of Chiy. and Benton, and Harrison, and Andrew Jtickson, shut off hy the Middle States and the mountains from the coast sections, had a solidarity of its own with national tendencies.* On the tide of the Father of Waters, Xorth and South met and mingled into a nation. Interstate migration went steadily on — a process of cross-fer- tilization of ideas and institutions The tierce struggle of the sections over slavery on the western frontier does not tliuiin- ish the truth of this statement ; it proves the truth of it. Slav- ery was a sectional trait that would not down, hut in the West it could not remain sectional. It was the greatest of fron- tiersmen who declared: "I believe this Government can not endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all of one thing or all of the other.” Nothing works for nation- alism like intercourse within the nation. Mobility of popula- tion is death to localism, and the western frontier worked irre- sistibly in unsettling population. The eflects reached back from the frontier and' affected profoundly the Atlantic coast and even the Old World. GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY. But the most im xjortant effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy here and in Europe. As has been ffMdicafed^the frontier Is productive of indivrduansiu.r ~Com- plex society is precipitated by the wilderness into a kind of * Compare Roosevelt, Thomas Benton, ch. i. 1 AMEKICAX HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 222 primitive orgaiiiziitiuii based oii the family. The tendeuey is anti- social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any (brect coutrol. The tax-gatherer is vietvedliTa~repre- seiitative of opjtressiou. Prof. Osgood, in an able article,* has pointed out that the frontier conditions prevalent in the colo- nies are important factors in the explanation of the American Kevolntion, tvhere individual liberty was sometimes confused with absence of all effective government. The same conditions aid in explaining the diliienlty of instituting a strong govern- I meut in the i)eriod of the confederacy. The frontier individu- r alism has from the beginning promoted ilcmocrncy. The frontier States that came into t1n‘ TTninn^ the first gua r- ter of a century of its existence ca me in with democra tic suffrage pr ovisions, and had reacnve eli'ects of the h ighest importance u)>on the older States whose peo]des were being attracted there. An extension of the franchise became essential. It was western Xew York that forced an e.xtension of suffrage in the constitu- tional convention of that State in 1821; and it was western Virginia that compelled the tide-water region to put a more liberal suffrage provision in the constitution framed in 1830, and to give to the frontier region a more nearlj^ proiiortionate representation with the tide-water aristocracy. The rise of democracy as an effective force in the nation came in with western preponderance under Jackson and William Ilenry ilarrison, and it meant the triumph of the frontier — with all of its good and with all of its evil elements.! An interesting illustration of the tone of frontier democracy in 1830 comes from the same debates in the Virginia convention already referred- toY’ A representative from western Virginia declared: But, .sir, it ia uot the increase of i) 0 {)ulation iu the West which this gentleman ought to fear. It is the energy which the mountain breeze and western habits impart to those emigrants. They are regenerated, politi- callj' I mean, sir. They soon become working politicians; and the difference, sir, between a talking and a ^vorking politican is immense. The Old Do- minion has long been celebrated for producing great orators ; the ablest metaphysicians in policy; men that can split hairs iu all abstruse ques- tions of political economy. But at home, or when they return from Con- gress, they have negroes to fan them asleep. But a Pennsylvania, a New York, an Ohio, or a western lurginia statesman, though far inferior in logic, metaphysics, and rhetoric to an old Virginia statesman, has this advantage, that when he returns home he takes off his coat and takes hold * Political Science Quarterly, ii, j{. 457. Compare Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, Chs. ii-vii. j tCompare Wilson, Division and Reunion, pp. 15, 24. FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY — TURNER. 22S of tlie ])low. This gives him hone and muscle, sir, and preserves his republican principles juire and uncontaminared. So long- as free laud exists, the opportimity for a eompeteuey exists, ami economic power secures i)olitical power. But the democracy horn of free laud, stroug- in selfishness and individu- alism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as it benetits. Individualism in America has allowed a laxity in regard to governmental affairs v’hich has rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly develo])ed civic spirit. In this connection may be noted also the induence of frontier conditions in permitting lax business honor, iutiated paper currency and wild-cat banking. The colonial and rev- olutionary frontier was the region whence emanated many of the wor.st forms of an evil currency.* The West in the war of 1812 repeated the phenomenon on the frontier t)f that day, while the speculation and wild-cat banking of the period of the crisis of 1837 occurred on the new frontier belt of the next tier of States. Thus each one of the periods of lax tinancial integrity coincides with periods when a new set of frontier communities had arisen, and coincides in area with these successive frontiers, for the most part. The recent Populist agitation is a case in point. Many a State that now declines any connection with the tenets of the Populists, itself adhered to such ideas in an earlier stage of the development of the State. A primitive society can hardly be expected to show the intelligent apprecia- tion of the complexity of business interests in a developed society. The continual recurrence of these areas of paper- money agitation is another evidence that the frontier can be isolated and studied as a factor in American history of the highest importance, i * On the relation of frontier conditions to Revolutionary taxation, see Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, Ch. iii. 1 1 have refrained from dwelling on the lawless characteristics of the frontier, because they are sufficiently well known. The gambler and des- perado, the regulators of the Carolinas and the vigilantes of California, are types of that line of scum that the waves of advancing civilization bore before them, and of the growth of spontaneous organs of authority where legal authority was absent. Compare Barrows, United States of Yesterday and To-morrow; Shinn, Mining Camps; and Bancroft, Popular Tribunals. The humor, bravery, and rude strength, as well as the vices of the frontier in its worst aspect, have left traces on American character, language, and literature, not soon to be effaced. 224 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. ATTEMPTS TO CHECK AND REGULATE THE FRONTIER. The East has always feared the result of an unregulated advance of the frontier, and has tried to check and guide it. The English authorities would have checked settlement at the headwaters of the Atlantic tribntaries and allowed the “savages to enjoy their deserts in (|niet lest the peltry trade should decrease." This called out Burke’s splendid ]>rote.st: If you stopjied your grants, what would be the coiisef|uence? The jieople Would oecupy without grants. They have already so occupied in many places. You can not station garrisons in every ]iart of these deserts. If you drive tlie ]>eopie from one place, tliey will carry on their annual tillage and remove witli their flocks and herds to another. IMany of the peo]dc in the liack settlements are already little attached to jiarticnlar situations. Already tliey have topped the Appalachian mountains. From thence they heliold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow; a square of live hundred miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change their manners with their habits of life; would soon forget a government by which they were disowned; would become hordes of English Tartars ; and, pouring down njion your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your go\ ernors and your counselers, your collectors and comp- trollers, and of all the slaves that adhered to them. iSuch would, and in no long time must, be the etfect of attempting to forbid as a crime and to suppress as an evil the comm.iud and blessing of Providence, “Increase and multiply.” Such would be the happy result of an endeavor to keep as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by an express ch.arter, has given to the children of men. But the Eiigli.sli Goveniment was uot alone in its desire to limit the advance of tlu; frontier and guide it.s destinies. Tide- w;iter A'irgiuia * and South Carolina f gerrymandered those colonies to insure the dominance of the coast in their legis- latures. AVashiiigton desired to settle a State at a time in the Xorthwest; Jefferson wonld re.serve from settlement the terri- tory of his Louisiana purchase north of the thirty-second ]>ar- allel, in order to ofler it to the Indians in exchange for their settlements east of the Mississippi. “ When we s-hall be full on this side,” he writes, “ we may laj* off a range of States on the w’estern baidc from the head to the mouth, and so range after range, advancing compactly as we multiply.” Madison went so far as to argue to the French minister that the United States had no interest in seeing popidation extend itself on * Debates in the Constitutioual Convention, 1829-1830. t [McCrady] Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas, i, p.43; Calhoun’s tVorks, i, pj). 401-406. FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY TURNER. 225 the right bank of the Mississippi, but sliould rather fear it. When the Oregon question was under debate, in 1824, Smyth, of Virginia, would draw an unchangeable line for the limits of the [Jnited States at the outer limit of two tiers of States beyond the Mississippi, complaining that the seaboard States were being drained of the flower of their population by the bringing of too much land into market. Even Thomas Benton, the man of widest views of the destiny of the West, at this stage of his career declared that along the ridge of the Bocky mountains “the western limits of the Eeimblic should be drawn, and the statue of the fabled god Terminus should be raised upon its highest peak, never to be thrown down.” * But the attempts to limit the boundaries, to restrict land sales and settlement, and to deprive the West of its share of political power were all in vain. Steadily the" frontier of settlement advanced and carried with it individualism, democracy, and nationalism, and powerfully aft'ected the East and the Old World. MISSIONARY ACTIVITY. The most effective efforts of the East to regulate the frontier came through its educational and religious activity, exerted by interstate migration and by organized societies. Speaking in lS3d, Dr. Lyman Beecher declared: “It is equally plain that the religious and political destiny of our nation is to be decided in the West,” and he pointed out that the population of the West “is assembled from all the- States of the Union and from all the nations of Europe, and is rushing in like the waters of the flood, demanding for its moral preservation the imme- diate and universal action of those institutions which disci- pline the mind and arm the conscience and the heart. And so various are the opinions and habits, and so I'ecent and im- perfect is the acquaintance, and so sparse are the settlements of the West, that no homogeneous public sentiment can be formed to legislate immediately into being the requisite insti- tutions. And yet they are all needed immediately in their utmost perfection and iiower. A nation is being ‘born in a day.’ * * ♦ But what will become of the West if her pros- perity rushes up to such a majesty of power, while those great institutions linger which are necessary to form the mind and the conscience and the heart of that vast world. It must not * Speech in the Senate, March 1, 1825 ; Register of Debates, i, 721. S. Mis. 104 15 226 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. be permitted. * * * no man at tire East quiet himself and dream of liberty, a\ liatever may become of the West. * * * Her destiny is our destiny.”* With the appeal to the consci(“nce of Xew England, he adds a])])eals to her Ibai s lest other religious sects anticipate her o\\ n. Tlie Xcw England preacher and .school-teacher left their mark on the West. The dread of Western emancipation from Xeu'Englamrs political and economic control Avas paralled by her fears le.st the West cut loose from her religion. Com- menting in 18 .j 0 on repoiTs that .settlement Avas ra]ddly extending northward in Wisconsin, the editor of the Home Missionary writes : ‘‘We scarcely know whether to rejoice or mourn over this extension of our settlements. While we .sym- pathize in whatever tends to increase the physical resources and ])rospcrity of our country, we can not forget that with all lliese dispersions into remote and still remoter corners of the land the supply of the means of grace is becoming relatively less and less.” Acting in accordance with such ideas, home missions were established and Western colleges were erected. As seaboard cities like Philadelphia, I^ew York, and Baltimore strove for the mastery of Western trade, so the various denomi- nations strove for the jiossession of the West. Thus an intellectiml stream from Xew England sources fertilized the West. Other .sections sent their missionaries; but the real struggle was between sects. The contest for power and the expansive tendency furnished to the various sects by the ex- istence of a moving frontier must have had important results on the character of religious organization in the United States. The multiplication of rival churches in the little frontier towns had deep and lasting social effects. The religious aspects of the frontier make a chapter in our history which needs study. INTELLECTUAL TRAITS. From the coiiditious of frontier life came intellectual traits^'^ of profound importance. The works of travelers along each | frontier from colonial clays onward describe certain common traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still per- sisted as survivals in the iilace of their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the I fronBer^th_e^American intellect owes its striking characteristicSj/ That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and Plea for the tVest (Ciiiciunati, 1835), pp. 11 ff. FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY — TURNER. 227 iuqiiisitiveness; th at practical, invpntivp. turn of miud, quick to flud expedients ; that masterful grasp of material tbings, laeking in tlie_artistie but powerful to effect great ends; that K^^tle’ss, nervous energy;* that dominant individualism, work- ing for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuber- ance which comes with freedom — these are traits of the frontier, or traits.called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Ooliind)us sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant exi)ansion which has not only been o])en but has even been forced u|)on them. He would be a rash jirophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Move- ment has been its dominant fact, and, uidess this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a Avider field for its exercise, lint never again Avill such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of cu stom are broken and unrest raint is triumphant! Tliere is not tahnl a rasa. The stubborn AmgiU can 'Environme nt is'tliere AyfOTits imperiottUsuinmons to accept j its coiTditions; the inherited Avavs of doing thines are also thei'e ; I and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each | frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate \ of escape from the bondage of the past; and fi'eshness, and \ confidence, and scorn of older society, impatieuceof itsrestraiuts ‘ and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, haA’e accompanied the frontier. What the iMediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new exiierieuces, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. j^ And now, four cen- ^ turies from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and Avith its going has closed the first period of American history.^ * Colonial travelers agree in remarking on the phlegmatic character- istics of the colonists. It has frequently been asked hoAv such a people could have developed that strained nervous energy now characteristic of them. Compare Sumner, Alexander Hamilton, p. 98, and Adams's History ' of the United States, i, p. 60; ix, pp.240, 241. The transition appears to become marked at the close of the war of 1812, a period when interest centered upon the development of the West, and the AA'est was noted for restless energy. Grand, Americans, ii., ch. i. . •;» j '’V ♦ 1 r I V > I . ♦ ' V V I V I ■' it n A [ £ ❖ ir. " 1 tr' .J DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA 27706